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Picked up a used 130xe and have some questions


tlgrooms

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I never had an 8 bit atari computer back in the day but have picked up several  over the years (800, 400, 800xl, 600xl and just recently a 130xe with a non-working keyboard).  I replaced the mylar on the 130xe and it's working fine now.  I have a fujinet i have been using with it and an 800xl I have that works also.  Questions I have:

 

The 130xe has an external 3 position toggle switch that goes to a board inside with a Ramrod XL chip and an extra empty socket.  What exactly does this do?  The Fujinet only appears to operate in one of the 3 positions.

 

When trying to load games from the sdcard on the fujinet i'm not having much luck.  Last night on the 130xe I got a message stating the game required 48k of memory.  Other games will load for a while and then go back to a ready prompt.  I thought the 130xe had 128k of memory?  Is that not correct?

 

I was a big 2600 and 5200 fan before moving over to Commodore.   The 5200 is still my favorite console of all time and I want to try some of the games on the computers because I know they were pretty much the same.  Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

Tim

130xe1.jpg

130xe2.jpg

Edited by tlgrooms
Added pics.
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8 minutes ago, tlgrooms said:

 

 

The 130xe has an external 3 position toggle switch that goes to a board inside with a Ramrod XL chip and an extra empty socket.  What exactly does this do?  The Fujinet only appears to operate in one of the 3 positions.

 

When trying to load games from the sdcard on the fujinet i'm not having much luck.  Last night on the 130xe I got a message stating the game required 48k of memory.  Other games will load for a while and then go back to a ready prompt.  I thought the 130xe had 128k of memory?  Is that not correct?

 

 

Given you have a mod/upgrade in place and it may well be malfunctioning or missing something, that might be the cause of the issues you are having. Yes normally the 128k on a stock 130XE should be fine. But yours is modded and thus no guarantee things are right. 

 

Upload a few hi res images of the internals. I am sure someone will be able to then tell you more. 

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I see dead people 😀

 

It looks like you have MT Ram. 
Micron Technology ram has the propensity to not reset ( holds chunks of data ) after powering down and up. If you notice, they put a good Japanese ram in the first slot, which tells me  They knew that ram was bad. pair that crappy ram with the shitty power supply’s they shipped with the 130 and 65xe’s and you know why so many are broken. It’s just something to be aware of. 

Edited by Paul Westphal
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I'm sure my genuine OmnimonXL with ramrod was on a nice looking PCB than that, almost looks like its a clone..Could be my memory, which isn't as bad as that MT ram that is in there. Can't remember how many OS's you could swap between, mine was set almost constantly on Omnimon.

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Are the memory chips the same in the 800xl and 130xe?  I replaced several in my 800xl a while back by piggybacking them.  Can the 130xe memory chips be piggybacked like the 800xl?

 

Can anyone point me to the best replacement chips for the 130xe?  or give me a number?  or should I look for some like the 1 unique one in the 130xe?

 

Thanks everyone for all your help.

 

I do have a new power supply and didn't use what came with the 130xe when I bought it.

Edited by tlgrooms
added power suppy info
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30 minutes ago, tlgrooms said:

Are the memory chips the same in the 800xl and 130xe?  I replaced several in my 800xl a while back by piggybacking them.  Can the 130xe memory chips be piggybacked like the 800xl?

 

Can anyone point me to the best replacement chips for the 130xe?  or give me a number?  or should I look for some like the 1 unique one in the 130xe?

 

Thanks everyone for all your help.

 

I do have a new power supply and didn't use what came with the 130xe when I bought it.

Here are XE and 800XL compatible ram chip equivalents:

 

 

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